The conventional progressive wisdom is that the Trump Administration will be bad for cities and for transit users. But in recent decades, a unified Republican government has been better for public transit than a divided government.

An efficient and equitable transport system must be diverse to serve diverse travel demands. Planners need better tools to quantify and communicate the benefits of walking, cycling and public transit to sometimes skeptical decision makers.

Co-Housing Grows in Brooklyn

A group of Brooklyn residents has taken over an unfinished 40-unit development site and plans to create a co-housing community with a courtyard and 6,000 sq ft of common space for meals, work and play.

"They envision an arrangement called "cohousing," a place where neighbors sit down to share meals several times a week, where children roam freely from home to home, and where grown-ups can hang out in a communal living room. They plan, in short, to create a village within a single development, and their chosen site is in the middle of a tree-lined brownstone block in Fort Greene.

The group, which has been incorporated as Brooklyn Cohousing L.L.C., is in contract to buy an unfinished project known as Carlton Mews, whose developers had planned 40 high-end condominiums. The developers drew up plans for apartments surrounding a common courtyard, with the units to be built in an long-abandoned Episcopal church, its former rectory and a new building with a facade that mimics the stately town houses on the block."

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